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With a fairly quiet week in K-12 schools, both public and private, in Palm Beach County, this week’s Education Talkback question is going back and looking at a trend in higher education first reported in April.

According to the report, 65.9 percent of the roughly three million teens who graduated from high school in 2013 were enrolled in a college or university this year, a slight decline from the 66.2 percent the year before and the lowest percentage of graduates enrolled in nearly a decade.

College enrollments increased steadily during the worst years of the national economic collapse and peaked in 2009 but have declined for several years.

According to the federal report Asian graduates had the highest college enrollment rate at about 79 percent while about 67 percent of white graduates enrolled in college. Among black and Hispanic graduates about 59 percent of graduates enrolled in college.

These trends have not been mirrored in Palm Beach County, which has seen the number of high school graduates, the number of attending college and the percentage of graduates attending college all grow since 2008.

Study after study such as one released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggest that those with college degrees, even two year associate’s degrees from community colleges, have the potential to earn thousands more over their lifetime even after accounting for the stiff student debt they might have to take on to pay for rising college tuition.

So today’s Education Talkback question to parents and high schoolers out there is “Do you still think going to college after high school is as important as it once was for a successful and happy life? And why do you think the number of graduates enrolling in college has been declining for the last few years?